Posted on by Evan Gough

Ice Deposits on Ceres Might Only Be a Few Thousand Years Old

NASA's Dawn spacecraft captured this approximately true-color image of Ceres in 2015 as it approached the dwarf planet. Dawn showed that some polar craters on Ceres hold ancient ice, but new research suggests the ice is much younger. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / Justin Cowart
NASA's Dawn spacecraft captured this approximately true-color image of Ceres in 2015 as it approached the dwarf planet. Dawn showed that some polar craters on Ceres hold ancient ice, but new research suggests the ice is much younger. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / Justin Cowart

The dwarf planet Ceres has some permanently dark craters that hold ice. Astronomers thought the ice was ancient when they were discovered, like in the moon’s permanently shadowed regions. But something was puzzling.

Why did some of these shadowed craters hold ice while others did not?

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